


Forelsket e Saudade

by Tayine



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Birth, Emotions, Gen, Pre-Canon, Rose pov, Tears, so many tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 21:03:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7656691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tayine/pseuds/Tayine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short imagining of Steven's birth with the idea that Rose leaves it until the last moment to tell her friends and loved ones that she is giving up her form for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forelsket e Saudade

In the dark, Rose was lying on her back, tracing the facets of her gem when the pressure that she’d been feeling for months shifted just a trace. She paused and opened her eyes slowly. It was almost imperceptible, but it was there.

She sat up carefully, accommodating the extra weight in her belly. The light came up in her room, brightening from predawn stillness into a spectacular sunrise of pinks and whites. She pressed her hand flat onto her stomach, cradling her gem in her palm.

A door stretched and grew and opened. Garnet stepped inside, her mouth tight.

“Pearl first, please,” Rose said in the soft, musical undertone she used when she was holding back everything else.

Garnet hesitated, a rarity, which Rose caught and smiled at, still holding her gem in one hand. She’d been touching and feeling her stomach for weeks now.

To soften something, whatever that may be, she asked, “You understand, don’t you? I would think of all of us, it would be you who did.”

Her soldier did not respond at first, thinking it over, battling with herself, but she nodded eventually.

Rose breathed a tiny sigh, her curls falling onto her face with the movement she made as her shoulders fell. If not the other two, at least there was one. At least they’d have each other.

When she looked back up, Garnet had gone. She returned with Pearl in a matter of moments.

Pearl came straight to her, as she’d known she would. She kneeled as well, putting her delicate long fingers over Rose’s own, over her gem.

“Is it the baby?”

Rose nodded, resting her other hand on Pearl’s shoulder, then moving it up to cup her cheek. “It’s going to come.”

“Good.” The word was sharp with vehemence, with the good riddance she’d meant. “You can give it to Greg and be done with it.”

“Pearl. My Pearl.”

Pearl closed her eyes; she hadn’t been addressed that way in so long. Rose felt sick with the guilt of realization. There had been so much happiness in her world lately, so many new things, that some of the old hurts hadn’t healed properly. She had been neglectful and lofty in a way that shamed her. It was so very diamond of her. She’d seen the aches of abandonment in all three of them, and she’d tried to nurse them as she could, but the distance between the Crystal Gems and their leader had been too far to cross for some time now. She wondered why they had allowed her to treat them in that way and knew the answer the next instant, bringing her almost to tears.

“Pearl, I know you’ve stepped back from this whole thing, but there’s something I have to tell you. Something you need to understand.” Rose leaned forward, her belly pinching awkwardly above her thighs so that she had to spread them to accommodate it, her bare feet resting under her bottom. Pearl arranged herself closer, bringing her knees into the space that had opened up for them. She was suspicious, which hurt, but the fall would be mortal.

“I know I haven’t been supportive,” started Pearl grudgingly, trying to shoulder the blame that wasn’t entirely hers. Rose loved her for that, hating herself for it more.

“I haven’t tried to explain it to you,” she sighed. “I haven’t tried to help you get through everything.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s almost over.”

“Pearl.” Rose swallowed the next few words and looked at Garnet, who had been standing still and strong beside the door to the temple. She had worn the visor for nearly three thousand years by now, and Rose understood why. Greg had told her once that humans believed eyes to be the windows to the soul. Once he had spent a long, frustrating afternoon explaining the concept of souls, Rose had agreed.

“Do you know what a baby is?”

Pearl tittered, her eyes half-closing with the arrogance that had long ago nearly gotten her smashed. “It’s a young human. They grow organically.”

“But do you know how they’re made?” Rose hadn’t, not until Greg had spent yet another, even longer afternoon detailing it, this time with the help of several books that he’d brought from Beach City’s small library and a rash of blushing and giggles on both sides.

“No,” Pearl smiled. “It can’t be that complicated, though, if you managed to do it with your body.”

“Well, two humans supply the, let’s call them the equivalent to our kindergarten-mineral. They come together and combine the two tiny bits into one.”

Pearl looked at Garnet for the first time, probably picturing a much different, and yet mysteriously similar, process.

“It’s not fusion,” Rose said. “It’s biological. Organic. Life.”

“But you don’t have life,” Pearl said. She showed the first sign of distress, the first inkling that something was going wrong. “Why are you telling me this? Why did you call me here?”

“My wonderful, brave, honorable Pearl. Greg gave the baby part of himself, and I have to do the same.”

“But you can’t do the same.” Her brave knight’s voice rose. “You don’t have anything to give.”

“I do.”

“You can’t!”

Pearl was on her feet, her hands balled into fists. Human tears were working down her cheeks, splashing cold onto Rose’s thighs. “Don’t you know what we did for you?! Do you even care what we gave up? And you- you’re just going to throw it away for some _human_?!”

“He’s not just some human, just like this baby isn’t just-”

“I don’t _care_ about the baby! I want you! That’s all I’ve ever wanted! It’s all I’ve ever known!” Pearl backed up, bumped into Garnet, and shied away from her as if she’d been burned. “How… how _dare you_ , Rose!”

“That’s enough,” Garnet said.

Pearl turned and slapped her across the face, knocking her visor to the cloudy floor. Rose was on her feet in an instant, her dress rippling around her ankles.

“You knew!” Pearl spat at Garnet, who was stunned into silence – or maybe she’d seen the blow coming. “You knew all along, and you did nothing to stop her. You’re just as arrogant and irresponsible as you ever were.” She vanished through the door back into the temple.

Rose went over and picked up Garnet’s visor. “I don’t know how to make it better,” she whispered, handing it to her.

“You can’t,” Garnet said softly.

Rose wiped her face and returned her hand to her stomach. She’d felt a pain there that had nothing to do with the baby. “We have to tell Amethyst next-”

“I’m here,” came a small, raspy voice. She stepped sideways, showing herself in the doorway. “I was eavesdropping.”

“I’m so sorry, sweetquartz,” Rose said, going to her and pulling the smallest, youngest gem into a hug. “I wanted to tell you a different way.”

Amethyst was quiet in the hug and quiet when she pulled away. Her hair was longer than it had been the last time Rose had noticed – oh god, that was Greg’s hair wasn’t it, with the jagged ends and the bouncy life to it – and remembered that Amethyst had last retreated to her gem nearly a month ago, had it really been that long since she’d thought about anything other than herself?

“I agree with Pearl,” Amethyst said. Her new hair hid part of her face, but she brushed it aside to stare Rose down. “You can’t do it.”

“I have to,” Rose said, her voice breaking. “If I don’t, the baby-”

“What about us?”

The silence of her room was all around them, suffocating and sterile and, damn it, so _un-Earthlike_. Rose couldn’t think of a way to make them understand. Even Garnet was hurt, though she had come to Rose when she had first discussed the possibility with Greg and had offered words of support. That didn’t mean she was happy about being left on Earth, the last rebel gems down by one. And all that Rose Quartz and her soldiers, her friends, had fought and died for, would be left behind if she went through with it, memories of a past so distant the world would never know the truth.

“There is more to us,” said Rose slowly, gaining inspiration like she had on the battlefield, when she’d had to rally the troops, “than the four of us.”

“Like what?” snapped Amethyst, who surprised Rose with her reaction. If Pearl was on one end of the spectrum and Garnet the other, she had at least thought Amethyst would hover in the middle, equal parts understanding and betrayed, supportive and despairing.

“Like the Earth, for one. We fought the war we fought for it, and for all the life which lived here.”

“Great,” Amethyst said. “And you guys won. So I don’t understand why you have to die now.”

“It’s not death, Amethyst, not the way we understand it. It’s… it’s life. Like I told Pearl. I’m giving this child life.”

“At the expense of yours,” Garnet said suddenly. She seemed surprised at herself, and when Rose looked at her, she closed her mouth and turned her face away.

“My existence as we know it will end, yes, but that doesn’t mean- listen!” She scared them both, making them jump. “Listen to me. I will be gone, but that doesn’t mean I’m leaving you. All of you. I will always be here with you. And you’ll have this baby, who will grow and learn and need you all. Can’t you promise me you’ll watch over my child, who will be as much me as I am now?”

Garnet was the first, of course, steady, sure Garnet with the knowledge and instinct of two lives behind her. Amethyst promised with the sullen resistance of an untrained soldier, but she hugged Rose again, squeezing with all her strength and willpower. And when Rose and the others walked through the door into the temple, her room closing behind her for the last time, they found Pearl in a heap of knees and elbows at the mouth of the temple cave, sobbing so loudly that her cries were echoing out and upsetting the gulls.

“Please don’t do it,” Pearl wept. “Please Rose, I can’t do this without you.”

Rose settled beside her. “I love you. I love you so much, Pearl.” At this, her knight moaned and buried her face in her hands. “But I have to. I want to. I’m going to leave behind more than just a senseless, cruel war as my legacy.”

“Spoken like a diamond,” Pearl gurgled, still trying to be mean and hateful like she had back in the room.

“That’s not fair,” Rose chided softly. She started to say more.

“Rose?”

Rose flinched. Greg was coming up the incline, a purple songbird on his shoulder. The bird fluttered away into the mouth of the temple, but Greg paused, judging the last few strides between them. He was red-faced; he’d probably run the last few steps when Amethyst had flow to summon him, finding him halfway to the cave already.

“She said it was time,” he said, looking at Pearl’s crying with bewilderment.

“It is. But Greg-”

“Pearl, what’s wrong?”

Pearl pushed away from the arm Rose had placed around her and stomped down the hill, getting close to Greg. She approached him with the same wrath she’d demonstrated towards Garnet, but at the last second, she veered away and headed for the ocean’s edge, not stopping until she was just another one of the sparkles of the sun on the waves.

“Greg, there’s something I have to tell you. Come here.”

Greg obeyed, glancing back at Garnet and Amethyst, who were standing together in the temple. He had always gotten on better with them, but he would find no loyalty or sympathy there tonight. She had many regrets, she realized now.

She took his hand in one of hers, leaning down for a kiss.

“Aren’t you… doesn’t it hurt? I don’t know as much about childbirth as I probably should, but something doesn’t feel right,” he said.

“When I told you I could give you a child, I wasn’t being completely honest,” Rose said. She watched his face crumple and wondered if this way had truly been kinder.

“Is it…?”

“It’s fine, for now. But there’s one more thing I have to do.”

“Well, yeah, you still have to deliver it! I told you about that part, right?”

“You did,” Rose said, finding it in herself to chuckle, even after everything, at his gentle naiveté, at his good heart. “One more thing after that.”

“Naming it?”

“We already chose the names,” she said, losing herself for a moment in the fun it had been to pick through a baby names book and imagining the kind of person her child would become.

“Then what?” he said. His anxiety was reaching a fever pitch.

“I have to give it myself.”

There was only the sound of the gentle lapping of waves for a long moment. Then Greg murmured, “I don’t understand,” making Rose think that he actually did.

“You gave your part,” she said, smiling at his blush. “I have to give mine.”

“I thought you did that. You were… you were supposed to do that at, uh, the beginning.”

“I did, as much as I could. But the baby is half-gem. It’s not complete without a gem.”

Greg made a relieved sound in his throat, hurting her. “Will it be born with one?”

“It’s going to have mine.”

“Yours?” He glanced down at it, where it distended and sparkled at the peak of her round, round belly. “What about you?”

“I will… I will be a part of it.”

Greg blinked slowly, absorbing this. His tongue came out to worry at his chapped lips.

“Do you remember what you taught me about souls?” she said, hurrying now.

“Yes,” he said, sharper than she’d ever heard him speak before. “Do you mean to tell me-”

“Yes,” she said. He didn’t need to say it aloud. “I’m going to give the baby my gem and my soul.”

“But what about you?” he asked. He had been holding one of her hands, and he gripped it now, squeezing at her fingers with the miniscule power of a human. She loved him so much.

“I’ll be gone.”

“You can’t.”

“If you want this baby-”

“Not like this!” he exclaimed. Long years of music had scarred his vocal cords, and his voice cracked now with emotion and age. “I want this baby, I love this baby, Rose, but I love you too! I can’t do this by myself!”

“You won’t be by yourself. You’ll have Garnet and Amethyst, and Pearl too, in time.”

He seemed to finally connect Pearl’s frenzy with the reality of the situation. His eyes were wet now too, but his tears were real like theirs had never been. They were just light, whereas humans were life, and this baby would be half of each, as special and exciting as anything she had ever seen on any planet in any of the centuries she’d spent as herself. She couldn’t wait for it to be born. The last thing she had to do was make sure the others understood and accepted the magic of what was about to happen.

“Rose,” he whispered. Giant, fat tears of anguish rolled down and hung at his chin. “Rose, please don’t leave me.”

“I’ll never leave you, Greg, ever.” She kissed him on his forehead, letting her lips linger there. “You’ll be a wonderful father.”

Her body shimmered. He’d been leaning into her, and he fell forward when the dense light of her skin became thin. She had one last look at his face gazing at hers, and beyond it, the brilliant blue of the sky, and the cotton candy clouds above, before her vision went white.

 

* * *

 

 

Greg wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, adjusting his balance so that he wouldn’t fall onto the newborn. Rose had dematerialized in the same way that he’d seen before, becoming light and air and beauty, folding inward into the body of the infant lying on the floor of the temple. The baby was tiny and red, pinched and wrinkled, but dry of the waters of birth, and his skin was warm where Rose’s had always felt slightly wrong. On his navel, where his umbilical cord should have been, glittered the pink gemstone from his mother, smaller on him than it had been for her, but just as brilliantly beautiful. He gestured with tiny fists, opened his mouth, and took his first breath, letting it out in a scream of life.

Greg picked up the baby and cradled it, amazed that he seemed to fit perfectly in the crook of his elbow. He heart swelled even as he was reblinded with tears.

Behind him, Garnet and Amethyst had approached. They crouched on either side of him. Greg tried to shush the baby and realized with a panic that he needed to get formula to feed it. Rose had never mentioned how the baby would eat, and he hadn’t thought to ask. She’d known how it was going to happen the whole time.

The baby sucked in breath after breath, squalling just like the gulls above, and this cry was as primal, human, and natural as it could be. Rose would have loved it.

Greg looked up in surprise when Pearl’s head appeared above the slope of the incline up to the temple. For an instant, he imagined himself taking off running with the baby in his arms, but he saw something in her eyes. He knew nothing bad would happen with the three gems around him.

Pearl came close and knelt. Her eyes were wet, but her gaze was unwavering. She reached out with one hand to stroke the baby’s cheek.

“Steven,” Greg said thickly, and watched in amazement as the baby’s cries faded away at Pearl’s touch.

After a heartbeat or two, Pearl said, “Hello, Steven. We’re going to watch over you.”

Greg believed her. He kissed the gem on his son’s belly.


End file.
